This overview was a part of our protection of the 2024 Sundance Movie Pageant. It has been republished for the movie’s theatrical launch.
The Pitch: An extinction occasion has made the Earth a really empty place, so when a solar-powered “sensible” buoy (Kristen Stewart) powers again on after a few years, it doesn’t have anybody to make contact with. Till, that’s, it wirelessly connects with a passing orbital beacon (Steven Yeun) that occurs to be serving as “humanity’s tombstone.”
The beacon comprises an entire archive of human historical past and expertise, and in accessing it remotely, the buoy finds itself flooded with details about the lifeforms that when occupied this planet — info that triggers an evolution in consciousness, one which finally conjures up the beacon’s personal self-awareness. Finally, the buoy (now often known as Me) and the beacon (taking up the title Iam) are capable of work together within the digital realm — and a very unusual and exquisite love story begins.
“Right here, We Can Dwell”/ “However What Is Life?”: A wide ranging, joyful, and profound examination of the character of consciousness and the that means of life, Love Me takes a premise that sci-fi authors has been exploring for many years and finds an entire new method. What wouldn’t it take, for one thing so simple as a pc program embedded on a microchip on a random system, to achieve a better state of consciousness — to even perceive what it means to be acutely aware?
Science remains to be trying to find these solutions, whereas fiction loves exploring the query. What’s outstanding about Love Me is the way it offers a considerate, virtually novelistic method to exploring each characters as they evolve and develop — even the way in which by which the movie is made lends a lot to the expertise, a “combined media” method to the storytelling that comes with bodily animatronics, CGI animation, and stay motion.
The Michel Gondry affect is obvious, and at instances, the shift between the completely different kinds generally is a bit jarring, however it’s important to organising the logistics of how these characters construct their relationship — whereas additionally reflecting how synthetic their preliminary interactions are: In making an attempt to know what it means to be alive, Me takes the method of “faux it till you make it,” leaning arduous on the archived posts of a long-dead social media influencer and her boyfriend, additionally performed by Stewart and Yeun, making a Blue Apron supply meal collectively, ceaselessly, on YouTube.
Not-So-Robotic Performances: It’s fairly enjoyable to have the ability to write a phrase like “a solar-powered ‘sensible’ buoy (Kristen Stewart)” in a overview, however what’s much more enjoyable is watching because the movie’s two stars actually find yourself changing into their characters, their depiction on display screen reflecting their rising evolution in direction of actual life.
Initially, Me and Iam join as digital avatars paying homage to the Mii determine you’d create to your Nintendo Wii profile (sure, that’s a loopy outdated reference, however it’s what involves thoughts). And as they develop extra subtle of their understanding of existence, the 3D animation additionally turns into extra subtle, to the purpose the place you possibly can truly see Stewart and Yeun because the actors behind their actions.
It’s an evolving course of, which signifies that because the movie contains them increasingly more within the motion, the viewer more and more turns into conditioned to just accept flesh-and-blood actors as these personas which have been born and developed because the starting of the movie. Which is to say, at a sure level in Love Me, it’s Kristin Stewart and Steven Yeun speaking to one another on digital camera, and also you see them not simply as actors, however because the personifications of two lonely machines. It’s a reasonably outstanding accomplishment, enhanced by the dedication Stewart and Yeun deliver to their respective performances.
The Verdict: Love Me had the potential to be a little bit too treasured in its storytelling — definitely there’s one thing profoundly cute about two robots falling in love, as any Wall-E fan will let you know. What retains the narrative balanced is the uncooked bleakness of the setting: Me and Iam themselves don’t have the simplest relationship, the tough edges of which offer loads of narrative ups and downs. And extra importantly, there’s no hope for humanity’s return, no sense that future generations may be revived because of Me and Iam.
As an alternative, Me and Iam function humanity’s closing legacy, an sudden however profound one, because of the nuanced manner that each Me and Iam start their first steps in direction of self-awareness. It makes you contemplate what we’ll abandoning as a species, ought to our time on the planet come to an finish. Nevertheless it additionally makes you wish to respect what all of us have, whereas we’re right here. Just like the miracle of a glass of water. Or a Blue Apron supply.
The place to Watch: Love Me premiered on the 2024 Sundance Movie Pageant. It made its theatrical debut on January thirty first, 2025.